Lyra wished somepony would interrupt. She wished some oblivious member of the Apple family would charge in. She wished Marble would wake up and start screaming. Anything to relieve her from this choice.

But nothing happened. The house didn't stir, Marble didn't awaken. Lyra and Fleur were alone, the latter's words seemingly splattered all over the walls like fresh blood upon a crime scene.

“You're lying,” said Lyra.

The words were desperate, but her tone was weak. She might not know how, why, or when, but she knew Fleur was no liar.

Lyra's gaze shot to the amnesiac on the night stand. She was scared that her magic might work on its own. She might grab it and down it in one without even thinking. To keep herself steady, Lyra focused on the bottle and its place in the emerging equation.

Fleur levitated a piece of paper from her saddlebag.

“I'll write down her address,” she said. “One sip and you'll have it. What do you say, my dear Lyra? How much do you love her?”

Lyra fixed her gaze on the piece of paper. What did she want, really want out of this? The truth most certainly, but there was something more important. A reunion between her and a mare whom existed only in her vivid secondary set of memories.

“How many times have you done this?” said Lyra. “How many other ponies...?”

Fleur seemed taken aback by the question, but she responded hastily.

“Oh, a dozen,” she said. “Perhaps more. It's a rather significant part of my job. I've grown accustomed to it.”

Lyra realized why Fleur was speaking so freely. Fleur was giving her frank answers because she fully expected her to take the amnesiac.

“Cover-ups,” said Lyra musingly. “Protecting the citizens of Equestria from the truth.”

She paused as something came to her.

“Do you know the truth?” she said.

Fleur shrugged.

“It's not my job to know,” she said. “It's irrelevant to our mission statement.”

But Lyra could tell that was only half of it. Perhaps Fleur didn't know the entire truth, but she certainly knew things Lyra didn't.

“I'm growing tired of this little game,” said Fleur.

She turned back towards the window. Fleur looked over her shoulder and gave Lyra a knowing smile.

“You want to pretend you have an actual choice,” she said. “I completely understand. It's difficult for ponies like you to admit when they've been backed into a corner.”

She levitated a glowing object from her saddlebag and into Lyra's lap. It at first appeared to be its own independent light source. But when it dropped into Lyra's lap, it became clear that it was actually a small blue crystal.

“Use that if you need to contact me,” said Fleur. “Otherwise I'll be back tomorrow night.”

Her smile broadened. That wolfish quality came back in all its malicious glory.

“You won't be able to run away from this, my dear Lyra,” she said. “We will find you.”

With that, Fleur's horn lit up. A blinding light steadily swallowed up her form. Abruptly, the light seemed to briefly explode outwards. Fleur vanished from sight.

Lyra looked at the amnesiac on the nightstand. She shuddered.

Fleur had said “we”. Not “her”, but “we”. It seemed there might be more players entering the game.

Lyra went downstairs. She wasn't sure why. Everything she needed—all the evidence she'd gathered, all the questions she had—were upstairs in her temporary bedroom. But for whatever reason, Lyra wanted to be away from all that. She wanted to be somepony other than Lyra the Truthseeker.

Moondancer was lying on the couch. One glance suggested she was asleep, but another revealed her to be awake. She was on her back, front hooves against her chest. She was staring at the ceiling as if it had personally offended her, her glasses perched haphazardly upon her forehead.

“Can't sleep?” said Lyra.

Laughing sourly, Moondancer jabbed her hoof at the ceiling.

“Have fun with Fleur?” she said.

Lyra didn't ask how Moondancer knew. She seemed like the kind of pony who knew everything.

“When she took you...,” Lyra began.

Moondancer cut across her with a high-pitched laugh. Even if their journeys hadn't been the same, the physical effects were almost identical. Moondancer too has visibly aged during the past few months.

“She didn't take me,” she said. “Oh, she was going to. I got the hay out of there the second I got a whiff of her expensive perfume.”

Unexpectedly, Moondancer leaned over and shoved a hoof underneath the couch. She groped around for a moment, then pulled out a familiar object.

“Sorry,” she said. “I couldn't let her get her hooves on this.”

Lyra scarcely recognized the object at first glance. She hadn't seen it in so long that she'd nearly forgotten what it looked like.

“My satchel,” she said.

She snatched it from Moondancer with a somewhat rude abruptness. She held it above her head. Lyra hadn't realized it was possible to tie so much emotional importance to an inanimate object.

Her hooves quivering with emotion, Lyra opened the satchel. Her breath almost hitched when she saw its contents. It seemed nothing had been moved or altered. It was her satchel, inside and out. The only thing that had resisted change throughout Lyra's harrowing quest.

She withdrew her copy of The Wizard of Canterlot. Her tears were making it difficult to see, but she hastily opened it. The photograph was still inside, miraculously untouched. Bon-Bon's smiling face warmed her heart in ways Lyra couldn't have articulated.

Moondancer rolled her eyes at this over-emotional reunion, but she allowed herself a subtle grin.

“You're welcome,” she said.

Lyra did something she had never done before. She pressed the photograph to her mouth and gave Bon-Bon's face a light kiss. It was silly, but it made her feel better about the decision Fleur had given her.

Moondancer pulled something else from under the couch. This time it was a simple saddlebag.

“Most of my stuff is in a storage unit in Vanhoover,” she said. “But I did some research while I was on the road.”

She opened the saddlebag and dumped an impossible amount of papers and books onto the floor. She appeared to have been making use of at least one powerful space manipulation spell.

“Ponyville isn't the only town to have disappeared over the past thousand years,” she said. “In fact, it's one of at least twenty I dug up. I couldn't find any names or locations, but the cases are all remarkably similar.”

She picked up a crumpled map and showed it to Lyra. It was a particularly ancient map of Equestria that lacked many of the major settlements or landmarks. Moondancer had drawn question marks in several seemingly empty stretches of land across the map.

“The rate of disappearing towns sparked dramatically after the legend of Nightmare Moon became widespread,” she said. “More than five gone in a year.”

Lyra frowned. She was again seeing connections. Ponies turning to dark magic, ponies creating cults based on these legends, forbidden spells, the differences between modern magic and the spells of old.

“A ritual,” she said. “Those ponies were performing a ritual.”

She had no idea who “those ponies” were. Additionally, Lyra still had at least five questions. She was getting an idea, but there were still some holes to be filled. Above everything else, she needed to find the well.

“Why?” Lyra said.

She hadn't meant the question for anypony, but Moondancer scowled.

“Don't ask me,” she said. “I had to call in at least ten favors just to get the information I have.”

Lyra started towards the door.

“Where are you going?” demanded Moondancer.

Without turning back, Lyra pushed the door open. She was sick of waiting for information, sick of hoping that some new lead would fall into her lap. It was time to be proactive.

“To find the well,” she said.

She'd left her saddlebag by the door. She picked it up and slung it over her back.

Lyra didn't ask if Moondancer was coming with her. She simply left the house. She didn't care either way. This was her journey. Nopony else had to stick their muzzle into it.

But after a minute, Lyra heard hoofsteps following her. It seemed her quest could never be her own.

A part of Lyra expected Granny Smith to be in the shed. With what little reaction Granny Smith had to Lyra's reappearance, she couldn't be faulted for half-expecting—and half-wanting—some kind of pivotal encounter.

But Granny Smith seemed to have withdrawn from Lyra's quest for the time being. She wasn't in the shed, nor did she suddenly appear behind them when Lyra and Moondancer stepped inside.

Nevertheless, Lyra muttered an apology to the empty air. She ignored the raised eyebrow she received from Moondancer and trotted to the middle of the room.

“It should be here,” said Lyra.

She ran a hoof across the solid boards. She hoped Marble's vision—or at least her interpretation of it—had been accurate.

Moondancer closed her eyes. Her horn started to glow with a nearly blinding intensity.

Alarmed, Lyra galloped over to Moondancer and touched the tip of her horn. She pulled her hoof back abruptly as a lightning bolt of heat shot through it. Despite the minor pain throbbing in her hoof, Lyra's action had the intended effect. She watched as the glow in Moondancer's horn suddenly flickered out.

“What in Tartarus do you think you're doing?” Lyra said.

She knew that type of magic. Whatever Moondancer had been planning, it would have caused an explosion of some kind.

“Digging up the floorboards,” said Moondancer.

Lyra rolled her eyes.

“More like leveling the entire shed,” she said.

She trotted back to the middle of the room. Displaying her superior patience, Lyra started using her own magic to tear up the floorboards. It was tedious work that took a careful amount of focus, but she thought it was worth it. It certainly made more sense than tearing the entire shed from its foundation.

Moondancer sat and watched, hooves crossed. She refused to help, even though the slowness of the process was clearly riding her nerves.

After a full ten minutes, Lyra saw her first glimpse of the well. Her heartbeat quickened at the sight of it. She wasn't sure she'd even expected an actual well. With all she knew, it seemed equally possible that the entire thing was metaphorical. But there it was.

A few minutes went by, then Lyra had fully uncovered the well. She stepped back from it. How had she made it this far? How had all of her research and turmoil led her to something so mundane at first glance?

However, the well was not entirely mundane. When Lyra dared a closer examination, she found it to be filled with water. The water itself was not speckled with dirt or otherwise polluted. In fact, it was unnaturally clean.

Lyra started to reach her hoof towards it, but Moondancer appeared beside her.

“Don't,” said Moondancer.

She regarded the well cautiously, as if she expected something within to stir.

“That's purified water,” she said. “If you touch it, something terrible will happen to you.”

Lyra stared at the strangely untouched water.

“Purified water?” she said. “You mean like holy water?”

She knew water “blessed” or “purified” by an alicorn was considered priceless. But she'd been under the impression that the gesture itself was more powerful than the effects.

Moondancer shook her head.

“There used to be a ritual,” she said. “Unicorns would gather around a water source—usually a well—and remove all traces of “impurity” from it. Ironically, it made the water itself undrinkable. But it permanently gave both the water and its “vessel” magical properties.”

Lyra's eyes lit up. It was a long shot—a very long shot—but wasn't that her specialty?

She focused her magic for a moment. There was a blinding flash of light, then the blank book appeared in the air before her.

Moondancer smirked.

“Impressive,” she said.

Lyra paid no attention. She levitated the book above the well, hesitant. It was less than a hunch. But surely the possible reward outweighed how badly her plan could stab her in the flank.

Before the reluctance could overwhelm her, Lyra dunked the book into the well. Even though she was holding it with her magic, she felt a wave of strange energy rush over her as the book was submerged. She fought the urge to lean forward and thrust her own head into the water.

Moondancer seized Lyra's tail with her magic.

“Don't do something stupid,” she said.

Lyra could feel the desire to be purified grappling with her logical mind. At Moondancer's words, the irrational urge loosened its hold. She was able to shake it off and focus on the task at hoof. Her mind clear, Lyra withdrew the book from the well.

The book was seemingly untouched by the water.

Her heart working itself up yet again, Lyra opened the book. Even though it showed no visible signs of having been in the water, she refused to touch it. She instead held it aloft with her magic. It levitated a safe but readable distance from her face.

Words began to appear on the first page. The writing was small, the letters neat and closely packed.

The Journal of Spike the Dragon.